Delicate
by stefanie bean
Summary: Everything about Starla is delicate. (Part 6 of "Tales from the Bardo," stand-alone one-shots where the Losties journey through the flash-sideways, struggling with themselves, their pasts, and their karma.)


**Delicate**

Golden street lights are starting to come on as Hugo cruises along the Santa Monica Boulevard, headed towards Our Lady Star of the Sea Church. Libby has some last-minute unfinished business with Ana Lucia, and she will meet him there later.

No problemo. In fact, he's kind of savoring the last few minutes of solitude, especially since parts of the street are starting to shimmer like a curtain in a breeze. Glitches in the matrix, some might call it. De-realization was the name they gave it at Santa Rosa. Or maybe it's just another weird aspect of being dead.

When he catches a glimpse of the shop-front out of the corner of his eye, he slams on the brakes. The boulevard should be bumper-to-bumper at this time of day, but there is no one behind him as the Humvee lurches to a standstill.

One more stop, Hugo tells himself, trying to still his pounding heart. One more stop won't matter, because there's the record store, just as he remembers it. Under a different name, though, because the big pink neon sign now reads, "Los Angeles Records."

The Angels Records. Subtle. Even so, he would have recognized the shop anywhere.

A faint bell jingles as he opened the door, shivering a little despite the warm night air. Trying not to knock anything over, he weaves his way through too-small aisles crammed with bargain-DVD and CD-bins, past rows of displays full of vinyl. _That '70s Show-_era stereo systems are lined up on the far wall by the checkout counter. That's something new. Maybe analog has come back into fashion.

Through the plate-glass windows, golden streetlight merges with pink neon to cast a rosy glow over everything. The lights inside are turned low, almost too dim to see the titles on the records in their bins. Faint shadows of cover art seem to wink at him as he passes by, drawn on by an invisible lure.

He hears her before he sees her. "Hu-_go_."

Old games, old jokes just as fresh as the first day they were made. "Star-_la_."

She emerges from behind the counter, not as young as he remembers, but then again, neither is he. Her still-beautiful eyes never leave him, not even during the long hug that cuts like a knife when all the memories come rushing back. At least her eyes aren't wet with tears now.

When she breaks off the embrace and strides past him to the front door, from behind she looks just as she did on the day that she left him.

She turns the sign from "Open" to "Closed," then smiles. "Key Lime Fizz, right?"

"You got some of that? They stopped making it years ago."

She opens a glass soda bottle and sits it in front of him, then does the same for herself. "To old times."

He raises his bottle to clink against hers. "I messed up, Starla." The lime soda slides down like green rain, better than he remembers even from when he was a kid.

"Messed up? You did fine, Hugo. You didn't quit your job, and the bees never stopped making honey, not even once."

"That's not what I— Wait a minute, you knew about that? About the Island?"

"Well no, not at first. Not until I... remembered." A tiny smile flickers like a moth at the corner of her mouth, only to flutter away when she chuckles. "That day you came into the shop to try on headphones, I was so glad to see you that I just started to babble. Who knew it would turn out to be true?"

It embarrasses him that he hadn't thought of her until he drove past the storefront. Desperately his gaze roams the store, the merchandise, anything to take him away from his discomfort. "Not many customers."

"Once in awhile. When they're ready they come to me, searching for the music that they love the most. To take with them. Sometimes if they can't pick, I do it for them. Nobody's been disappointed yet."

A slow anxiety thuds against Hugo's insides. "Take with them... where?"

The look she gives him shows that she has said too much. "Never mind that now." She motions towards some upholstered chairs in the corner of the store. "You have time?"

"All the time in the world." As he says it, the air around them seems elastic, as if it could stretch into an hour inside this glossy pink cavern, yet still get him to the church on time. He settles down into a comfortable leather chair. "This is... your place?"

"A lot like the one I had. When my aunt died, she left me just enough for a down payment on the business. Vinyl was coming back, and people wanted the systems to play it on, the diamond needles, everything. My timing was just lucky, I guess." Her beautiful smile sweeps over him like a searchlight. "There are other places I could have waited, but this one's fine."

Waiting. Of course. How could he be so dumb, to forget that part? "So... Johnny hasn't come along yet?"

She laughs like bells ringing all at once. "Johnny? You mean Johnny Corey from the old neighborhood?"

He sets his drink down on the kidney-shaped glass coffee table, unable to meet her eyes. Once more he becomes his young, indignant, betrayed, rejected self, reciting a story he has repeated so often that even he believes it to be true. "Well, yeah."

"Hugo." Her tone is serious as she sits straight up, hands folded in her lap like a dark-haired Madonna. "Johnny and I broke up a month after your plane crashed."

"No kidding." He lets this sink in for a moment. "So afterwards, you never...? I mean, I thought you might, I dunno..."

"Call you?" She sits back, her half-smile telling him that would have never happened. "You came back, alive and more famous than ever—" She twirls her soda bottle and stared down the narrow neck, as if this is as hard for her to say as it is for him to listen to. "There didn't seem to be any point."

"I shouldn't of yelled at you."

"No, you shouldn't have. But I understand why you did."

"Good, 'cause I sure didn't."

"After the crash, Johnny told me that you'd been in the mental hospital." She frowns, her face full of worry. "I wish you had been the one to tell me."

"I couldn't, Starla. Not Johnny, not you, not even the people I crashed with... Some of them never knew. Some of them didn't find out till I went back into the hospital." He hesitates asking, not sure if he wants to know the answer. "How'd Johnny find out?"

"Right after the lottery story hit the papers, one of the tabloids found a Santa Rosa aide who talked. Johnny even cut out the article, but didn't tell me, not until after he thought you were dead." When she shakes her head, all he sees is the girl he once knew, scared and heartbroken.

He wants to reach out and take her hand, but the glass coffee table rests between them like a shield. Hoping it will be enough, he says, "I almost did tell you. On the day after we went to the Troubadour—"

The memory seems to warm her from the inside. "When Mom got called into work early Sunday morning, and I asked you to come over to my house—"

"I was gonna tell you, I swear—" "It's okay, it was already in the news—" "Not about the lottery, I mean—" The rushing flood of words tumbles out of them both, bumping like stones carried downstream. "No, I already knew about the lottery, that was on the news—" "I didn't think you wanted to even see me after that night, so when you called—" "Why wouldn't I call, Hugo?"

The onrush pauses when he does. "Because at the club, I saw your face when that guy came up to us, wanting a picture. I freaked. Had a major panic attack. We didn't even get to stay for the second act."

She laughs like a woman with a lifetime's experience, not a young girl. "The Hold Steady was overrated. A waste of shelf-space, if you ask me."

"I swear, Starla, I was gonna to tell you that afternoon," he repeats. "But one thing led to another, and then..." He turns aside, flushing, because it wasn't the sort of "first" he would have wished for either of them.

That morning on the phone, she said that her mother wasn't going to be home. Her tone was so pointed, her meaning so clear, that he worked up the nerve to filch a condom out of Diego's old, abandoned dresser. Thank God, Diego wasn't at home any longer to thump him across the back before telling all his friends on the street that his fat, sissy little brother was going to become a man after all.

He filled her narrow twin bed, where she hovered over him like a bird looking for a place to roost. Even through his confusion and delight, he still saw the disappointed wince that crossed her face, followed by her sigh of relief when it was over.

It's as if she can read his thoughts, because in a gentle voice she says, "You're not remembering all of it."

That's true. Afterwards she sat beside him on the bed's edge, her bare skin covered by the shower of gold which poured through gauzy curtains. She was so beautiful that he could barely look at her. Limp from the too-quick release, he lay there astonished as her hungry palms roved over him like a sculptor molding clay.

It must be the right memory, because she says with a wistful smile, "You were like some kind of Jove."

Another good thing about being dead is knowing a lot more things than before, including exactly what she means by that. He hopes the dim, dark-pink light hides his blush. "I'm sorry it wasn't better for you."

"As first times go, it wasn't bad. I'd heard way worse stories from girls at school."

It ended with a knock on the front door. Mrs. Hernandez from the next house banged and shouted that she'd gotten some of Starla's mother's mail. The old woman's complaints resounded from the front porch as Starla leaped to her feet and struggled into her jeans.

There had been a few other times after that, even one when he managed to draw long sighs from deep within her. But no moment surpassed that first golden one. Until it all turned to ash.

"Did you keep my gift?" she asks in a soft voice. "I shouldn't have handed it to you the way I did."

One afternoon in Carmelita Park, when even meds and self-care hadn't settled his jangled, frightened nerves, he blurted out that she probably only wanted to be with him for the lottery money.

Murder by mouth. After her denials, his insistence, she flinched when he raised his voice. She stormed off to catch a bus, leaving him standing there by the tiny fountain, and she wouldn't answer any of his calls. Finally, when Diego jeered that he had seen "your little _jainita_ out walking with that skinny guy you used to hang with," Hugo worked up the nerve to go to the record store.

It was a terrible mistake. She glanced up at him with frightened, defiant eyes as customers silently edged away. Slamming a CD on the glass counter, she pushed it towards him hard, saying that here was something to remember her by. His lightning-quick grab saved it from crashing to the floor, and the CD's title had been as round as his astonished mouth. Damien Rice's _O_.

"Your CD... I brought it with me on the plane." He hadn't even unwrapped it until mid-flight, then played it over and over in the hours before the crash. On the Island he saved it for his most downcast moments, like whenever Charlie and Claire's billing and cooing made him want to walk out of the beach camp and never come back. Eventually the Walkman's batteries died, so the silver disc wound up in Sun's garden with many others, dangling from strings to scare away the birds.

"But then it kinda—" Even in his last moments in this unreal city he fights the temptation to lie and say that he lost it. "No. I got rid of it."

Again that weird, implacable calm shines from her like a candle. "You probably didn't need it anymore, then."

"I'm so sorry, Starla," he murmurs. "Could we have... Do you think we might have worked things out?"

"Maybe," she says with a sad smile. "But back then? Neither of us knew what we were doing."

"In more ways than one."

When she doesn't answer, time starts to weigh on him. When he shifts a bit, the invitation in his pocket crinkles, making its presence felt. It's an engraved one on fine, heavy paper, the summons to Christian Shephard's funeral. Jack will be there. Everyone will, and something inside him swells like a balloon full of sadness, love, and loss. "So, if you're not waiting for Johnny, then who?"

"My kids." Two simple words, yet they speak volumes. "Two girls. Their hands in mine were the last thing I felt."

Tears surge to his eyes. "Me, too," although when he had breathed his last, the crowd around him was bigger than he had hands for. "Some of mine, I think they're still back there. At least, I haven't seen them here."

"I know mine aren't," Starla says. "But I like this place. The wait isn't burdensome." When she picks up her empty soda bottle and stands, that's his cue to do the same.

"So, I guess..." Outside it's completely dark, the city having faded to a deep purplish-red.

"Did you want to pick?" she asks.

"Pick?"

"Some music to take with you."

He can't begin to imagine what to choose. Before he can stammer that out, she sys, "I think I've got the thing right here." She rummages on a shelf behind the counter, then squints at the CD's title. "Looks like a Blind Boys of Alabama demo, 'I Shall Not Walk Alone.'"

He has to get out of there before the lump in his throat erupts into tears. "It's perfect."

"Good to know I haven't lost my touch."

In so many ways, he thinks, as he puts the CD in his trouser pocket. In so many ways. "See you, Star-_la_."

"In another life, Hu-_go_."

It wasn't until he pulls into the driveway of Our Lady Star of the Sea that he understands what she meant.

(_the end_)


End file.
